Accelero S2 passive VGA cooler

Silence is a very
important factor for computers and today we had a chance to play with the Arctic Cooling Accelero S passive graphic card cooling. Arctic cooling is a proven silence master. It's newest Accelero S series cooler features a completely passive design and comes in two flavors.
The Accelero S2 is the smaller one and we tested it
today. It is meant to quietly, or better yet silently cool a mainstream graphics card, and it is
compatible with a wide range of ATI/Nvidia graphics cards up to the Radeon X1650/Geforce
7600 series.

Its mighty
brother, the Accelero S1, can fight with faster and more heat dissipating graphics cards. Power Color sells its ATI
1950PRO silent cards with the new passive Accelero S1 series and the cooler is also compatible with
all X1900 und X1800 cards. A wide range of Nvidia's cards is supported too, including Geforce 7950, 7900, 7800 and 6800
series cards.

The Accelero
S1 has four copper heat pipes, while the Accelero S2 series features two of them and
weighs just 202 grams. Its tiny copper base is not much bigger than the GPU itself and is
surrounded with an aluminum plate used for mounting. The cooler has a large surface area, it is pretty tall and extends beyond the height of the graphic card. We tried to push it into an Akasa AK-ZEN-01-WH PC case and it fits. The Akasa case is a small one, which means that the S2 should fit in all standard cases. Arctic cooling uses aluminum for all 31 dissipating
fins. They are placed wide apart, allowing air to easily pass through, removing the heat effectively. The whole mounting
process is very easy and can be finished in just a couple of minutes.

The box includes the Accelero S2, a short but useful manual
and everything else you need for mounting. It comes with eight memory heatsinks. The package also contains a bracket with a lot of holes. The bracket should be mounted in a second slot and it lets some fresh air in the case and makes the cooling better.

We used a Power Color 1650XT card with its cooler and then we mounted the
Arctic Cooling passive cooler on it and compared the temperatures. Power Color uses a specially designed cooler rather
than the ATI reference one. Its ok, unless you are a silence freak like our webmaster. The Power Color cooler is powerful, works silently and it's not
necessary to change it with a passive solution. In a bushel of cards with
the reference cooler we decided to compare the Accelero S2 with the Power Color`s one.

Arctic
Cooling recommends that the case be closed during testing of the cooler, along
with one or more fans installed on the case that blow the air out of the system. We
did our testing in two scenarios. In the first one we tried out the Accelero S2
outside the case, and then we installed it in a closed case and did the tests all over again.

Temperature
Testing (outside)

idle

load

Power
Color cooler

33

62

Accelero
S2

57

78

Accelero
S2 (wind blow in the lab)

40

46

Accelero S2 needs air circulation, at least a bit of it. Without air circulation around it the fins are accumulating
heat and you can directly see this on the GPU temperature. In load state there is a difference of 16 Celsius between Power
Color cooler and Accelero S2. Even a light wind
enables the Accelero S2 to work effectively, so we opened a window and door in
the lab, making a small draft.
We got much better
results. The GPU was a whole 32 Celsius cooler and the Accelero S2 was out blowing its competition.

An average user will use this cooler inside the case so of course we tried this scenario, placing the cooler in an enclosed case where the case fans enable airflow circulation. We used two 12cm Arctic Fans for the PSU. The machine was very quiet yet again.

Temperature
Testing (in the closed case)

idle

load

Power
Color cooler

44

58

Accelero
S2

43

50

Conclusion

It needs
a wind breeze but it will be the most silent cooler you can find. Accelero S2 costs
around €15, while the bigger one, the Accelero S1, costs around €20.

Accelero S2 gives
you better performance than ATI stock coolers and it will be better then the Nvidia
stock cooler as well.

We are
convinced, it does the job well and it doesn’t cost you a lot. We can easily recommend
it to all who like their graphics cards served cool and silent. It fits in most
cases and this should not be a problem either.

It is quiet, cheap and it does the job
better than any reference one, what more could you ask from your cooler.